104 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



his image disappears. The Peruvian sorcerers still proceed in the 

 same way, except that their figures are made of rags. In the 

 Indies, according to Dubois, they knead earth collected from a 

 very salt place with hair or pieces of skin, and make a figure on 

 the chest of which they write the name of an enemy, and then 

 stab it with needles, or mutilate in some way, in the belief that 

 the same harm will be suffered by the person represented. 



Traces of this primitive superstition are also found among 

 civilized people, for Grimn reports that in the eleventh century 

 Jews were accused in Europe of having killed Bishop Ebergard 

 by a sorcery of the kind. They were said to have made a figure 

 of wax representing the bishop, hired a priest to baptize it, and 

 put it into the fire. As soon as the wax was melted, the bishop 

 was attacked by a mortal disease. The famous adventurer, Jacob, 

 chief of the Pastorals, in the thirteenth century, seriously believed, 

 as he says in his Demonology, that the devil taught men the att 

 of making images of wax and clay, the destruction of which 

 brought on the sickness and death of the persons they repre- 

 sented. It was a custom in the time of Catharine de' Medici to 

 make such figures of wax, and melt them slowly before the fire or 

 stab them with needles, in order to bring suffering to enemies. 

 This operation was called putting a spell upon them. We may 

 also mention the opinion of the earlier Christian writers, who be- 

 lieved, according to Draper, that painting and sculpture were in- 

 terdicted in the Scriptures, and were consequently evil arts. It 

 may be questioned if this oj)inion did not have its roots in the idea 

 of primitive peoples that the art of drawing was an instrument of 

 sorcery, by means of which one acquired the power to act upon 

 a person. Mussulmans still have a horror of images, and the Koran 

 forbids having one's portrait made and possessing any image 

 at all. 



We would not exhaust this evidence if we did not cite all the 

 facts that go to prove that, in the mind of primitive man, it was 

 sufficient to possess anything — a piece of the garment, hair, a bit 

 of a nail — that had belonged to a person to have power to act 

 upon him and do him harm. The belief in the efficacy of this 

 means is still so strong among some backward peoples, that per- 

 sons who have any reason to distrust others hide their clothes so 

 that they shall not be robbed of any part of them. Others, when 

 they cut their hair or nails, put the cut parts on the roofs of their 

 houses or bury them in the ground. So peasants in some coun- 

 tries bury the teeth which they pull from themselves. 



We should add, to complete the picture, that writing to the 

 savage enjoys the same magic power as drawing. This is easily 

 understood when we recollect that writing by figures preceded 

 writing by letters or any conventional signs, and is still met 



